1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method and controller for identifying a movement simulating the button keys of a mouse and particularly to a method for identifying a single tap, double taps and a drag and a controller of a touch device employing the method.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The Graphical User Interface (GUI), which is a program operation interface developed by PARC research lab of ZEROX CO., can work with a pointing device such as the mouse. An action desired by a user is performed easily by means of a pointer type mouse with the button key on the mouse being clicked to overcome the inconvenience resulting from the conventional character mode which is required to input complicated instructions. Hence, the GUI has been adopted by Apple Computer Co. and Microsoft Co., respectively, and has become a mainstream mode in all the operation systems. Therefore, it is essential that the electronic equipment such as the desktop computer, the laptop computer, the tablet computer, the personal digital assistant (PDA) and etc. adapted with the GUI provides the pointing device.
The currently available pointing devices are the mouse which is externally disposed, the locus ball and the touch panel which are built in the portable computer system respectively, and the touch panel which is associated with the screen. The mouse is the earliest developed pointing device and, hereinafter, it is taken as an example to explain the function of the pointing device. The mouse is capable of controlling the pointer on the screen of the electronic device, i.e., the pointer moves in accordance with the mouse. Then, the executed target on the screen is pointed with mouse and the control key is pressed by the user to instruct the electronic device to carry out a certain function. However, the electronic equipment is currently designed to pursue smallness, shortness, lightness and thinness. For instance, the laptop computer has replaced the desktop computer gradually such that the small sized touch device such as the touch panel becoming the most popular pointing device is a trend in the near future.
The touch device can he classified into the capacitance type, resistance type, electromagnet type, pressure type, inductance type, surface sound wave type, supersonic types and optics type based on the applied techniques. When an object such as the finger moves on the touch device, the pointer is controlled to move along with the moving direction of the object. In addition, the pointing device has a function of instructing an execution.
The operation of the mouse is explained hereinafter. When the pointer moves to a target such as a program or a document which is going to be started, a single clicking a button key (the default button key is the left key) is capable of selecting the target, and double clicking the button key is capable of selecting and starting the target. Further, when the button key is kept pressing together with the mouse being moved at the same time, the target is dragged to another spot. Nevertheless, it is possible to define a specific gesture of the object on the touch device to perform the same purpose as the preceding operation of the mouse.
Referring to FIGS. 1A-1C, U.S. Pat. No. 6,380,931 entitled “OBJECT POSITION DETECTOR WITH EDGE MOTION FEATURE AND GESTURE RECOGNITION” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,414,671 entitled “OBJECT POSITION DETECTOR WITH DEGE MOTION FEATURE AND GESTURE RECOGNITION” disclose the touch device simulating movements such as a single tap, double taps and a drag respectively. Multiple timers are added to calculate a plurality of time intervals during an object on the touch device, and the single tap, double taps and drag are figured out via the time intervals. It is learned that the process of single tap shown in FIG. 1A provides a time interval Tdownwhich has to be smaller than the first maximum reference time interval Tmax—1. Then, the process of double taps shown in FIG. 1B provides a time interval Tdown which has to be smaller than the first maximum reference time interval Tmax—1, a time interval Tup-1which has to be smaller than the second maximum Tmax-2 and a time interval Tdown-2which has to be smaller than the third maximum reference time interval Tmax-3. Further, the process of drag shown in FIG. 1C provides a time interval Tdown which has to be smaller than the first maximum reference time interval Tmax—1, and a time interval Tup-1which has to be smaller than the second maximum Tmax-2. The preceding prior art is extremely complicated due to different combinations of the time intervals and sophisticate correlations between the time intervals such that the setup cost for the logic circuit becomes higher. Besides, it is easy for the preceding prior art to determine the movement of the object on the touch device erroneously because the respective time interval of the double taps and the drag operated by different users is somewhat different from each other.
Referring to FIGS. 2A-2C, U.S. Pat. No. 7,180,506 entitled “METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING A MOVEMENT OF SINGLE TAP ON A TOUCH DEVICE”. U.S. Pat. No. 7,190,356 entitled “METHOD AND CONTROLLER FOR IDENTIFYING DOUBLE TAP GESTURES” and U.S. Pat. No. 7,184,031 ENTITLED “METHOD AND CONTROLLER FOR IDENTIFYING A DRAG GESTURE” disclose a detecting time interval Tdetect and the start and the cease of the wave shape of a touch signal is analyzed to generate corresponding operation signals for representing the single tap, the double taps and the drag respectively. The detecting time interval Tdetect keeps the same time-duration. The instant prior art has overcome the deficiency of the prior art described in the last paragraph and provides easier way for determining the movement of the object on the touch device. However, the method of the instant prior art is incapable of responding the operation of the user due to the single tap, double taps and the drag being identified after the detecting time interval Tdetect.
As the foregoing, in order to improve the responding time while identifying the single tap, the double taps and the drag under a condition of keeping the simpler determination way for lowering the setup cost of the logic circuit is a subject worth to breakthrough.